Avalon1984-Chicken, horses, pigs, oh my!

[Dawn419]

And what a beautiful block of beeswax it is!

So sorry to hear about your hives! We are wanting to get into bees and have a friend that offered to get us started, but it's been one thing after another and we're just not there yet. When the time is right!

 

[moolie]

Sorry to hear about your hives as well Hope you can get everything back up and running again.

And yes, it is a lovely block of beeswax How did you mold it? What will you do with it?

 

[Avalon1984]

Sorry to hear about your hives as well Hope you can get everything back up and running again.

And yes, it is a lovely block of beeswax How did you mold it? What will you do with it?

How did I mold it...mhm...I'd call it my "it hasn't got a top rubbermaid" container

I have no clue what to do with it yet. So far I just like staring at it when I come from work.

 

[Icu4dzs]

I guess this just hasn't been a good year for bees. I am sorry to hear about your loss. It gets tougher each time it happens because you have to do so much work to clean it all up.
I have one hive left and I guess it is doing OK. I may add another super on it to give them more honey for the winter over. Having them inside a shed with tar paper around them didn't do too bad but then it was a VERY mild winter up here.
Hope your bees find that bait hive and get going on it.
Trim sends
Saepe Expertus, Semper Fidelis, Fratres Aeterni
//BT//

 

[Avalon1984]

Whew, this year is starting to get long and a bit painful. The long drought here has caused havoc among all the livestock people and hay prices are going through the roof. We normally pay $3 a square and we'll need will need approx. 1,500 this winter. Now the prices are around 5.00 a bale. There may not be a 2nd or 3rd cutting at all. Nedless to say, this will cause even more chaos for the horse market. Oh well, we'll hang in there like we always do. Had to deal with a jerk of a hay guy. We have been trying to lock into a price with him and even prepaying for a certain amount of hay. The day we were going to pick it up, and had all of our farm hands ready for some stacking, he said that he didn't have any. The next day he advertised his hay for $1 more per square. So I dropped him like a fly but he kept on calling asking if we wanted hay. What a weirdo. Today I locked in for 900 bales about one hour up north from here and we can only get 80 bales at a time in our rig, so it will be a painful week getting all this down here, but if we have any left over next year, we should be able to recoup the gas cost. We also locked in at $3 a bale at another place for 400 bales so we are getting close to what we need. This year has been a triple whammie because we lost both of our regular hay guys, we added 2 mares which are also pregnant now, and the drought is causing a shortage. But I'll hang in there.

Since last night I have been coming down with throat angina. not sure how they call it in the US but it's like you get some sort of throat infection and your tonsils (if you are as unlucky as I am and still have them) swell up and make it feel like your throat is closing up. Hurts like crazy and makes eating a chore. I am starting to feel the chest pain too so I think I will go to bed early and drink a gallon of Nyquil. Used to have it a lot as a kid so I know that I have 5 days to get better or see a doctor. ICU4DZ, maybe you can tell me which livestock antibiotic I should buy at Tractor supply to be fit for hay duty for Saturday

 

[Denim Deb]

Hope you get your hay. And, I think what you're referring to is what we call tonsillitis.

 

[the funny farm6]

i hear ya on the hay. people here just barely got a 2nd cutting, but people from all over (esp the south) are trucking it all away so even though we are getting hay cut none is aval. and becouse of that they are raising the prices. i got lucky the other day, i found some people on craigslist. they baled their alfalfa and left it in the feild overnight and a small rain came up so the stacked it on trailers and were selling it for $2.00 a bale. we got 50. that is all we could haul. we opened secveral bales and they are not wet inside. and very few are wet on the outside. so we salted them good when we stacked them. i am hoping they still have some this weekend.

 

[hqueen13]

Try the honey/onion mixture that is mentioned in one of the remedies threads. It works really well for me, and you can take as much as you'd like since it isn't really a drug, and is just honey and onions steeped together That Fire Cider recipe might also help you, that's in another thread somewhere.

Hope you feel better AND your hay moving goes easily. Its been a rough week for a lot of people!

 

[Avalon1984]

I will definetely try the honey/onion juice thing. I have been keeping it away with Jaegermeister but it seems to get worse again at night/ morning and then goes away during the day just to hit full blast again later.

We'll start picking up our hay tomorrow. not looking forward to it but it needs to get done. I talked to a friend of mine and she said out of a 13.5acre field where they usually harvest 1,200 bales of 2nd cutting, she got a mere 93 bales. That's just terrible.

Next Wednesday we'll find out if mare #4 is pregnant. Sure would be nice. It'll make it an Independence Day baby!

 

[Dawn419]

Here's the thread for the Fire Cider, if you want to give it a try. Doc and I have been taking it several times a week since December and neither one of us have been sick since starting on it. Hope you get to feeling better soon!

The hay situation in AR isn't pretty, either. In 2009 it was so wet that they couldn't get in the fields to work it, 2010-2012 have been so dry that they've been lucky to get a first cutting and it isn't the amount of hay that they are used to getting.

I had been looking for square bales of hay ever since we got the meat rabbits back in April but the only hay that everyone had available was the round bales...just a bit extreme for 2 buns. Doc was finally able to get a square bale of Bermuda hay from the feed store...$7.95 a bale.

A lot of the older farmers here have switched from squares to rounds because they can't find any youngens willing to work the squares anymore. I don't blame them for switching over but it sure has made it harder for someone like us, who doesn't need a lot of hay, to get it.